The Holy Grail

slowly siphoned off the Zardoz copy, his link to the university abruptly went dead. The admin had discovered the hacker and quickly killed the connection. All of which left Electron back at square one — until he found another copy of Zardoz on the CSIRO machine.

It was nearly 3 a.m. on 1 February 1990, but Electron wasn't tired. His head was buzzing. He had just successfully pene- trated an account called Worsley on the CSIRO computer called DITMELA, using the sendmail bug. Electron assumed DITMELA stood for Division of Information Technology, Melbourne, computer ‘A’.

Electron began sifting through Andrew Worsley's directories that day. He knew Zardoz was in there somewhere, since he had seen it before. After probing the computer, experimenting with different security holes hoping one would let him inside, Electron managed to slip in unnoticed. It was mid-afternoon, a bad time to hack a computer since someone at work would likely spot the intruder before long. So Electron told himself this was just a reconnaissance mission. Find out if Zardoz was on the machine, then get out of there fast and come back later – preferably in the middle of the night – to pull Zardoz out.

When he found a complete collection of Zardoz in Worsley's directory, Electron was tempted to try a grab and run. The problem was that, with his slow modem, he couldn't run very quickly. Downloading Zardoz would take several hours. Quashing his overwhelming desire to reach out and grab Zardoz then and there, he slipped out of the machine noiselessly.

Early next morning, an excited and impatient Electron crept back into DITMELA and headed straight for Worsley's directory. Zardoz was still there. And a sweet irony. Electron was using a security bug he had found on an early issue of Zardoz to break into the computer which would surrender the entire archive to him.

Getting Zardoz out of the CSIRO machine was going to be a little difficult. It was a big archive and at 300 baud –